'Call of Duty: Black Ops,' US Video Game, Slammed By Cuba For Fidel Castro Death Sequence

Cuba is condemning the release of a new video game in which players are challenged to assassinate Fidel Castro, the BBC is reporting.

Titled "Call of Duty: Black Ops," the controversial new game went on sale this week and is expected to be one of the holiday season's best-sellers. Set during the Cold War, the game's players take on the role of a U.S. special operative hoping to save the nation from a communist plot, with the action set in Cuba, Russia, Laos and Vietnam.

Produced by the highly popular first-person-shooter franchise by U.S. publisher Activision, the game features one segment in players run through downtown Havana, gunning down virtual combatants while pursuing a young Castro, the Independent is reporting.

Cuban officials have slammed the game as having the potential to turn young players into sociopaths by glorifying assassination. "This new video game is doubly perverse," an article on the government-run news site Cubadebate said, according to the Guardian. "On the one hand, it glorifies the illegal assassination attempts the United States government planned against the Cuban leader," government-run cubadebate website proclaimed. "And on the other, it stimulates sociopathic attitudes in North American children and adolescents."

Comments

[Bryan Mills]

06:26 PM on 11/16/2010

If I killed Castro in-game, I'm not going to Cuba and kill him. Cuba has to learn something about videogames.

[Sans Octavian]

04:43 AM on 11/15/2010

piss and moan castro.

[Paul Muntean]

05:19 PM on 11/14/2010

Black Ops working cheats and discover secrets about the game
http://www.onlinestreamingtv.info/bo.html

[SilentSolidarity]

02:43 AM on 11/14/2010

First of all, he spoiled the game. Thank you, Castro >:-(

Second, how does he know? Admit it, Fidel. You have Call of Duty.

[Angel R1240]

07:49 PM on 11/13/2010

Cuba is overreacting to this it's just a video game no one is going to kill Castro because someone played this game.

[caesarf]

03:06 PM on 11/13/2010

I slam the game too. Game developers don't be d1@ks and create mock assassination scenarios of living current and former heads of state.

[KsWrangler]

03:00 PM on 11/13/2010

Hm, been playing the game but haven't come across that yet. It is retro, so the enemies are the Communists.

[PaiaGirl]

01:37 PM on 11/13/2010

If you'd like to read the dissident bloggers take on the Castro Brothers see Translating Cuba

[raechel]

09:36 AM on 11/13/2010

I don't blame them at all. This is so stupid it hardly bears discussion.

[PaiaGirl]

01:38 PM on 11/13/2010

Pretty lacking in taste, but I suspect the game isn't as described in the article.

[vapaday]

09:04 AM on 11/13/2010

After however many FAILED attempts on Pres. Castro's life, we can now console ourselves by killing him in a video game. Has our country reached a new low, by illustrating our government's obsession inability to accept Cuba as a good neighbour? Yes thee are those who will seek to justify our sad attempts at assassinating Fidel Castro. Howeverwill those very same glorify our sad & pathetic attempt to rule the world!

[busterbrownthefirst]

02:54 PM on 11/13/2010

This really is crass. Good post. We'll open the doors to Cuba about the same time as we finally address Haiti's decimation.

[Krek]

12:05 AM on 11/13/2010

If they'd played the game they'd know it's not all about Castro. The final scene is a hilarious who's who from the 60's-70's political scene. It's about everyone who was important at that time.

[Cougar29]

10:35 PM on 11/12/2010

So now Castro knows fear?...Que bien!

[PaiaGirl]

01:35 PM on 11/13/2010

Learn the history of U.S. moves against Castro.
No es bien.

[JayDubs]

08:44 PM on 11/12/2010

In that picture he looks just like Liam Neeson, but with a beard.

[ElCojonuAgain]

08:31 PM on 11/12/2010

It was tried quite a few times but he is still around, while most of the ones who tried it are not.
That is part of the lore and mystique about him; he was always one step ahead of his enemies and very, very resourceful.
The man knew how to take care of himself and knew his enemies very, very well.
He's a PR..K, but a very smart and cunning one; you can't run a game on him.
Incidentally, I got a chance to meet one of his body doubles ( through a mutual friend ) over 10 years ago in South America; the stories he had to tell !
His life story through the past 51 years would make one hella of a movie.

[JayDubs]

08:19 PM on 11/12/2010

I find it quite amusing when the older generations rail about the horrible influences of video games. It's probably similar to what previous generations felt hearing their parents tell them about that terrible rock & roll that all the kids are listening to.

[freddiekrueger]

10:16 PM on 11/12/2010

i get your point, but these games are strictly composed of pointing and shooting as quick as possible. while they might not be driving force behind sociopathic behavior, they certainly do little to discourage it.

there are no puzzles, or intellectual stimulation in the first person shooter genre. it is whack-a-mole, with human targets, and a gun substituting the mallet.

somehow they have taken mindless video games and made them mind-draining.

for years, there have been games on the market that at least made kids think a little bit. these are like giving kids lobotomies.

[kwyang]

05:22 AM on 11/13/2010

If what you're saying were true, nobody would be playing these games. A shooting gallery's boring. Good AI that uses varied tactics, or better yet human opponents online, offer the real fun. A well played match stimulates the brain like chess and challenges the body like boxing (well, okay, no physical damage, but it sure requires fast reflexes and fast thinking). These are not games for kids, by the way, most shooters are rated M, which means more or less the same thing as an R rated movie. Stores aren't even supposed to sell them to people under 18 without ID. Obviously like an R rated movie that's not always foolproof.

While we're on the movie analogy, the video game industry made more money than the movie industry last year, and the game we're talking about here, Call of Duty: Black Ops, just made more money on its release day than Avatar. 5.6 million copies sold for $360 million dollars. In one day. You may be pleasantly surprised if you're still expecting the video games of the 1980s. Some games are genuinely artistic, others are big budget blockbusters. Call of Duty's more of the later, of course. Honestly pretty much everybody under 35 considers articles like this laughable, it's like people protesting German stereotypes in Die Hard. Come on.

[busterbrownthefirst]

02:57 PM on 11/13/2010

Hey, I'm 57 and I play Call of Duty. I'm a woman. How dorky is that? I picked it up from my kid. But this is not about video games in general. This is about the content of one video game. I think it's extremely objectionable.